In Japanese, 'Sarinagara' means 'and yet'. This word is the last word of one of the most famous poems of Japanese literature. When he writes it, Kobayashi Issa has just lost his only child: yes, all is emptiness. But Issa mysteriously adds this last word to his poem, leaving its meaning in suspense. This enigma is the theme of a narrative that brings together the stories of three Japanese artists across the centuries: Issa, the last great Haiku master of the 18th century, Natsume Soseki, inventor of the Japanese modern novel at the end of the 19th century, and Yamahata Yosuke, who was the first photographer to take pictures of the victims and ruins of Nagasaki in August 1945. These three 'dreamed lives' make the substance of a narrative that takes the reader from Paris to Kyoto and from Tokyo to Kobe, and asks the question of how anyone can hope to survive the most heartbreaking experience. 'Surviving is both the test and the enigma'. Following the death of his young daughter, the narrator moves to Japan with the project of writing an essay on Japanese literature. There, on the other side of the earth, he experiences a series of incidents that connect him to a recurrent childhood dream and allow him to explore the depth of his own grief through the stories of others. "Sarinagara" is a poignant meditation on the nature of grief, art, and memory.

菲利浦·福雷 ，1962年生。巴黎政治学院文学博士。法国南特大学比较文学系教授，曾在剑桥教过法国文学。先锋派文学史家、文学评论家、日本现当代文学专家。

著有《“原样派”史话》（1998）、《菲利普·索莱尔斯》（1999）、《小说，真实》（1999）、《小说，我》（2001）、《大江健三郎》（2001）、《为了另一种日本小说》（2004）、《从“原样派”到无限，新文论》（2006）、《序的艺术》（2006），小说《永恒的孩子》（1997费米娜处女作奖）、《纸上的精灵》（1999）和散文《所有的孩子，除了一个……》（2007）。